2.2 Selection of the appropriate modality
2.2.3 Putting everything together: the modality used in this study
Any of the presented definitions and classifications of modality is equally valid, one must simply choose the one that satisfies the purpose of the study. Here, the classification of modality is summarised in the following tree (Figure 6).
2.2. SELECTION OF THE APPROPRIATE MODALITY
Figure 6: Classification tree for modality used in my study
Modality
Necessity
Epistemic Deontic Ambiguous
Possibility
Epistemic Deontic Ambiguous
Hence, what does a modal marker represent: the realisation in language of the necessity or possibility of a reality element or state of affairs (SOA) in the speaker’s mind, either a non-controllable event (epistemic modality) or a controllable one via the hearer (deontic modality). Modality, then, is a reflection of how the speaker, a human, interacts through language using his mind with everything he or she perceives in the, so to speak, real world, the one that occurs out of his/her mind. Van der Auwera (1985, p. 27) draws an interesting diagram that represents this idea (Figure 3). We can divide the speaker’s mind (M) in two: an interactive device (ID), which interacts with the out of mind (OOM) world and the storing device (SD), which does not interact with the OOM. The SD consists on beliefs and desires, the ID on consciousness and intentions.
Table 3: Four-dimensional model of the mind. MIND
SD ID
Beliefs Desires Consciousness Intentions
A belief is a reflection of a SOA in the process of conceptualisation (a SOA generated in the Mind). It does so by creating an object of consciousness, generated with the interaction of the ID with the OOM, and transmitting its conceptualisation to the SD. A desire on the other hand is the cause of the reflection of a SOA conceptualisation. It this SOA is set in the future, the desire may result in an
intention. Van der Auwera (1985) defines each feature as the following:
1. A belief is a lasting SD-object resulting from an attempt of the ID to reflect a SOA in a conceptualization by creating a momentary object of consciousness and transmitting its conceptualization to the SD.
2. An object of consciousness is a momentary ID-object resulting from an effort to reflect an SOA in a conceptualization.
3. A desire is a lasting SD-object possibly causing an effort to reflect a concep- tualization in an SOA.
4. An intention is a momentary ID-object possibly causing an effort of the in- tender to reflect a conceptualization in a future W-SOA and resulting from a desire with the same conceptualization.
These processes may not remain inside the human mind. The human can perform an action accordingly, physically, and/or through language. If it is the latter, the result of this expression will be reflected with modality and modal markers in a sentence.
Returning to the example of the ambiguous sentence 21, ‘John may enter the room’, it indicates the possibility that a person named John will end inside the space of the room (possibility modality). Furthermore, it can also be interpreted as a reflection of the knowledge of the speaker (epistemic modality) or a permission of the speaker (deontic modality). A SOA has been generated inside the mind of the speaker triggered by the information received from the world perceived, the OOM: the possibility that John entering the room is true. However, this can be realised in two ways: The mind of the speaker has interacted with a SOA involving John and the room. If, for example the speaker has seen John approaching the door of the room, the OOM, the section of his/her mind interacting with it, the consciousness, would have conceptualised the idea of John entering the room, and this belief would have travelled to the SD, eventually leading to the thought that it was possible for John to enter the room since he was about to.
The opposite process could have been also taken place: The SOA of John and the room could have been conceptualised in the speakers SD through a desire, and
2.2. SELECTION OF THE APPROPRIATE MODALITY
would result in an intention generating a conceptualisation in a future W-SOA of John entering the room leading to a deontic modality in language. In this case, since the concept would be possibly true, that is, possible in some of the worlds of the speaker, the marker used to signal it in the sentence is may.
Taking necessity and possibility as the main points of the classification can be easily formalised into rules for the tagger. Firstly, since it is based on a logic perspective and it does not take a specific language as reference, it can be used in a cross-linguistic and, if necessary, in a cross-discourse study. Secondly, it can easily overcome the ambiguity problem between markers. Thirdly, the issue of negation can also be easily formalised. The main problems of the computational study, ambiguity and portability, could be resolved if we apply logic.
It may be incomplete, however, to select modality as necessity or possibility for several reasons. It would not offer us a comprehensive array of information of the intentions of the speaker, and we may leave out some modal markers. Moreover, the number of Japanese scholars following this view is a minority. Nevertheless, taking into account the variety of interpretations in this field, each study will be limited according to the point of view taken. This study is not trying to provide a definite answer to modality, but to consider the best approach for a computational study.
We now know what is modality and how it is going to be classified. The next discussion will cover how it is coded in a sentence. The next section will define what a modal marker is for this study, and move on to specifically talking about Spanish and Japanese, describing which markers we can find in each language and the problems that we may encounter by doing so.